Michael Clayton: Hollywood’s Last Movie for Adults
Michael Clayton is a character who gets a wake-up call. It’s not an “oh, wow, they killed off that character” moment, it’s not a clever reveal, it’s not an “instant[…]
Category: Crime
Dark Undercurrents: Claude Chabrol’s Second Wave from Les Biches (1968) to Innocents with Dirty Hands (1975)
“There are no waves, there is only the ocean.” – Claude Chabrol * * * From 1968 to 1975 Claude Chabrol directed a dozen films – one of the most[…]
Crime · Franchises & Series · Philosophy · TV & Streaming
Ten Years Since the Cable Went Out: Disassembling The Sopranos’ Finale, “Made in America”
As Jonah Weiner puts it, the final scene “does stage a violent death, patently and unambiguously: ours.” If the cut-to-black is punitive, it’s also Chase’s memento mori: remember that you[…]
White Privilege? It’s in the Fine Print (Django Unchained, American Hustle, 99 Homes)
The stories of Dr. King Schultz, Irving Rosenfeld, and Nick Carver contain a critique of American society deeper than just “white guys always get the benefit of the doubt.” These[…]
Watch It Again! Straw Dogs (Sam Peckinpah, 1971)
Peckinpah’s ethics and form are evinced best in his sixth film, Straw Dogs, where we also discover the key to his aesthetic of violence. David Sumner takes a sabbatical to Yorkshire,[…]
Family Night: Attacks on the American Homestead in Night of the Hunter and Night of the Living Dead
The two films under examination here, The Night of the Hunter (1955) and Night of the Living Dead (1968), would have you believe that nothing harrows the soul like an[…]
Watch It Again! Psycho (Alfred Hitchcock, 1960)
Hitchcock’s one-word titles have never been so instructive. Psycho is the feeling of being preyed on by your self, as by one of Norman’s stuffed birds. It is the primal[…]
Activist & Political · Counterculture · Crime · Drama
Watch It Again! Joe (John G. Avildsen, 1970)
The counterculture and the reactionaries are equally problematic in John G. Avildsen’s complex, underrated Joe. With its bitter, murderous white males at the center blaming their, and the world’s, ills on marginalized groups[…]
Crime · Drama · Thrillers & Action
Watch It Again! The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (Sweden, 2009)
This article inaugurates a new department at Bright Lights, revisiting a film from the past that is being given new life through a new release or a different medium, in[…]
Activist & Political · Crime · Essays
Lords of Nothing: Hell or High Water (2016)
“Hey, buddy. We’re exactly the same. What’s happening to these people happened to my ancestors, and it happened to your ancestors.” – Alberto to Marcus in Hell or High Water,[…]
African American · Crime · Documentaries
Black Lives Matter: Whitewashing the Amanda Knox Story in the Netflix Documentary
By ignoring the black lives involved, the new Netflix documentary Amanda Knox (premiering on Netflix on September 30) is not only a very white film, it ends up producing its own miscarriage of[…]
Don’t Breathe, Just Keep on Surviving
What I have identified is a recurrent depiction of American citizens committing acts of extreme violence against one another, almost always in service of financial interest. * * * Watched[…]
Activist & Political · Crime · Historical & Epic · War
Rethinking Historical Responsibility Through Art: The Role of Film in Joshua Oppenheimer’s The Act of Killing (2012)
The killers were more than willing to help and, when we filmed them boastfully describing their crimes against humanity, we met no resistance whatsoever. All doors were open. Local police[…]
Dramas of Morality and Corruption: Sidney Lumet’s Police Quartet – Serpico, Prince of the City, Q&A, Night Falls on Manhattan
Taken as a quartet, these films shift from lauding the exposure of police corruption to struggling futilely against its pervasiveness. In Serpico and to a lesser extent Prince of the[…]
Crime · LGBT & Queer · Writers & Critics
The Complex Art of Murder: The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999)
Someday someone will tease apart the many layers of Damon’s performance: the charming Ripley, the frightened Ripley, the exposed Ripley, his voice subtly betraying him even as face remains serene.[…]
The Horror of Depersonalisation: Lav Diaz’s Norte, Baudrillard, and the End of History
Fabian’s self-destructive peregrination, the ordeal he has imposed on himself through others – from the double murder, to the rape of his sister, to the slaying of his once beloved[…]
52 Shades of Gone: Gone, Goner, Gone-est Girl
Every failure, every road not taken is a Gone Girl all its own, Regular Amy’s story a machine for the draining away of these idealizations till she and we are[…]
Jean-Pierre Melville’s Noir Improvisations: Two Men in Manhattan, Le Doulos, Le Deuxieme Souffle
First daring and experimental in an era of conformity, then classical in the age of the new wave, and finally nuanced and introspective when fashionable tastes ran radical and revolutionary[…]
Comedy · Crime · Sound & Language
Sound, Music, and the Verbal MacGuffin in American Hustle (2013)
American Hustle is, foremost, a film about appearances, about what is real and the constant dialogue between the diegetic and the extra-diegetic, which is especially compelling at the level of[…]
Flashback: See L.A. Confidential Again . . . the First Time
This review of L.A. Confidential first appeared in Bright Lights in May 1998. We’ve always been fond of this piece, and are happy to repost it now, not least because[…]
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